Just another day in Israel

I took this photo an hour ago, at around 1 PM, while waiting for the bus to return home. On the left is the smart sign that supposed to tell you when your bus is arriving. A vandal smashed it, and the city has left it like this for the last three years. On the right is a bus that's supposed to have its line number visible on the top right side of the bus (to our left). It also is broken, so I didn't know if I should wave down the bus and risk a confrontation with an irritable driver.

This morning while heading out, I saw this at the bus stop. It's a broken down two car bus that blocked the entire stop. This left me with the anxiety of deciding if I should stand in front of the broken down bus to flag down working buses or stand behind the broken down bus. Some drivers stop in front and some behind, and if you don't get on quickly they leave. I saw a father walking small children in the street because of the obstruction. A few years ago, four hundred meters up the road, a child was crushed to death by a bus as his father walked him the street. Israelis never learn. 

Why did I leave work at 1? It's because the Internet wasn't working in the office. Note, it took 7 years for me to get a normal job for a quarter the pay I was earning in the USA even though it would cost twice the amount to buy the apartment I'm rending what it cost me to buy my home in the NY area.

I get home and replace the ice in my broken fridge with what we froze in our freezer, fail to get hotwater because the hotwater machine doesn't work, and try to cook something on the half of the stove that works. I try to make a phone call on the new phone that makes a crackling noise so bad you really can't hear the other person. Then I hear about a friend of a friend whose kid was arrested at the airport for draft evasion.

This is daily life in Israel. No, Rabbi Schachter, Israel does not have all the "modern inventions". If there is any actual Israeli technology it appears to be in missile systems and spying software. It is not in anything that is used in daily life by regular people.  

If you want to buy a car to avoid this daily hassle with buses, they are twice the price of that in the USA, and your salary will be 1/4 of that in the USA, if you can get a job.

No, Rabbi Schachter, Israel is not a wonderful place to live. And that other segments of Orthodoxy, i.e. Yeshivish and Chassidish groups don't promote aliyah isn't a shame as you indicate. It's a blessing. It's because their leaders live in reality, at least on this matter, and don't push their followers to live in war torn, strife ridden, economically challenged lands that they themselves don't live in.